


First, Do No Arm

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Series: Misanthropy [2]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gun Violence, In which Naomi schemes and Ocelot also schemes and they are murderfriends, Language Jokes, Mission Fic, Naomi has a few medical ethics but not many, Ocelot Hates The French, Post-MGS1, Secrets, conceptually linked to "Arms Race" which is why I put it in a series but it stands on its own, includes: my best wrangling of the MGS timeline into order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 12:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21428281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Ocelot wants an arm transplant for God knows what reason.  Naomi gets dragged in to help.  A hospital shouldn't be the place for espionage, backstabbing, power plays, or murder, but, well, you can't choose your situation, only what you do with it.  And Naomi won't pass up this chance to get some leverage of her own.Just because they'd be fully willing to murder each other if they get too far out of line, and they both know it, doesn't mean they're not something like friends.
Relationships: Naomi Hunter & Revolver Ocelot
Series: Misanthropy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544821
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	First, Do No Arm

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the nonprofit charity zine _Metal Gear Solid: Lost Years_, where it has [amazing artwork](https://atticusleeart.tumblr.com/post/182432060355) included by the incredible Atticus Lee!
> 
> Thank you so much to Cat TheLoneBamf for all her hard work.

She knew she’d waffled a moment too long, standing there in the hospital lobby, because a receptionist noticed her and said, “Ah, Dr. Jaeger, wasn’t it?”

All Naomi could do, pinned like that, was smile. Ignore the pang in her gut of _damn it_ and give the receptionist the practiced, slightly superior, utterly self-assured smile that meant nothing but was necessary to get her anywhere. “Oui, c’est vrai,” Naomi said, because French people liked it when Americans at least made an effort, “Je suis ici pour... I am here to discuss my fellowship position with Dr. Boutin.”

“Were you not here for that last week?” the receptionist asked. Innocently, not challenging. Dangerous anyway. Naomi had been here last week, playing this story they’d hashed out to case the place and set up for tonight, and it was her own fault for lingering long enough now for anyone to notice her and bother to remember.

“It is a process,” Naomi said. “Bureaucracy. You know.”

The receptionist winced in sympathy. She knew medical bureaucracy only too well. “Is Dr. Boutin expecting you?”

“He is,” Naomi said. He was not. “And I know the way, thank you.” Let the woman think she was haughty, rather than run the risk of alerting the good doctor too soon. Revolver Ocelot wouldn’t be happy if she blew it this stupidly.

Then again, it would be an excuse to call it all off. This was an easy chance to back out, if she wanted to take it.

Naomi turned her eyes to the double doors on the far side of the lobby, leading into the east wing, the sterile white maw that led straight to the belly of the beast. Declaring the conversation over. She was moving on.

This was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She was here for a reason. There were more important things that her doubts, than the chill of hearing herself addressed as _Dr. Jaeger,_ the words still reverberating around her head.

She could commit, for now. She could believe in what she was doing, for now. This was hardly a point of no return. Without another glance at the receptionist, Naomi started walking.

————

“How would you feel about kidnapping an arm surgeon?” Ocelot asked.

Naomi looked up from the new nanomachine-vector samples she’d really hoped to finish running today. Ocelot was always doing this, strolling into her lab with demands or questions, and she’d learned enough by now to know that she should just write off getting anything useful done in the next several hours. Ocelot was very good at not going away.

On the other hand, hopefully this represented progress. “If it means you’ve given up on the idea that I have to attach that desiccated arm to your desiccated body? Absolutely.”

“Good,” said Ocelot, who was utterly unshameable and she didn’t know why she bothered. “Because you don’t have a choice. I’m... _requesting_ your assistance.”

“I figured as much,” Naomi said. She put her half-finished notes aside, let out a long sigh and closed her eyes in a slow, steeling blink. Part of her had hoped he’d give up on this idea and just get a damn prosthetic and move on with his life. They _supposedly_ had bigger things to focus on.

(But a bigger part of her wanted this to go through. Didn’t want to be the one to do it, because, as she’d had to tell Revolver “Banned from the FOXHOUND R&D building” Ocelot, she was a geneticist and researcher, not a surgeon, these were not interchangeable – but she wanted to see if it would work.)

“Do you have a plan, then?” she asked.

He seemed insulted. He was Revolver Ocelot. Of course he had a plan. “I’ve put together a list of the top surgeons, nurses, and specialists in hand transplantation across the world. The President, of course, has given me _carte blanche_–” (he deliberately pronounced the French wrong) “– to act, and spend, however I deem necessary for this procedure to be a success.” He then paused, cutting off what was shaping up to be another monologue to grimace when he realized he had to holster his revolver to pull a file out of the inside pocket of his long coat, throwing off his rhythm and absolutely ruining the effect. He tossed it onto Naomi’s lab table huffily. “That’s the list. The surgeon I’ve chosen for this operation is an expert in transplantation surgeries who doesn’t have a strong public presence, Dr. –”

“William DeLuca?” Naomi said, already picking up the file and zeroing in on the name circled in red. “From Johns Hopkins? Oh, no, no, we are not working with him.”

“What?” Ocelot growled.

“I’ve met Dr. DeLuca. He did some guest lectures when I was in med school. He was a pig.” 

“Then the kidnapping and intimidation will provide you some catharsis,” Ocelot said.

A tempting consideration. And there was a slim chance she could change his mind. But this was a potential opening, and she wasn’t going to waste it on Bill goddamn DeLuca if she could help it, because a fantastic opportunity for the leverage she was looking for was staring her back in the face.

“Professional opinion,” Naomi said, because she’d very quickly learned to excise from her vocabulary the extremely useless words _trust me_. She slipped a pencil out from behind her ear, circled a name farther down Ocelot’s list, and handed the file back to him. “You don’t want William DeLuca. You want _him_.”

He glanced at the paper, then back up at Naomi. “Mathieu Boutin,” he said, enunciating the syllables with faint distaste. “A surgeon at the Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon, where he has been in residence for six years. Previously of the Val-de-Grâce Military Hospital in Paris, which he left under unspecified circumstances. Earlier in his career, worked for the UN in war zones. Specialist in wound care and reconstructive surgeries. Unassuming, few public political views, divorced, several close friends. Why?”

“I can personally vouch for him,” Naomi said. “I knew him when I was a child.”

Ocelot’s look was skeptical, unconvinced that he should believe her, or care even if he did. He said nothing. He wanted her to know that she was wasting his time.

“Ocelot,” Naomi said, because he wasn’t putting two and two together (he was _Revolver Ocelot;_ how was the connection not clear to him? Was he being deliberately obtuse to get her to drop it? He’d clearly done his research), “I was a child in one of those war zones he did UN work for. And that UN work certainly sounds like a coverup, because – I was eleven years old so I may be misremembering, but –”

“You were in Mozambique,” Ocelot said, and Naomi nodded. She wasn’t conceited enough to think that Ocelot didn’t know her entire personal history. He was working it out, and seemed to have genuinely not expected the conclusion he was reaching.

“If that man is the same Dr. Mathieu Boutin that I remember, he was the head of the medical unit at the Mozambique compound at which I spent my early life. Big Boss’s precursor to Outer Heaven.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t sound thoughtful. He sounded frustrated. Like he truly hadn’t known.

“And everyone in Big Boss’s private armies was chosen and accepted by Big Boss himself,” Naomi said, knowing she was pushing it but taking the risk.

Ocelot snorted at that. “That doesn’t mean much. He took in anyone, whether they wanted it or not. He was a... bleeding heart, in a certain very specific way.”

Not a digression worth pursuing, then. “I saw a boy, no more than twelve, step on a landmine that destroyed his right leg, up to the knee. Pulverized and unsalvageable. He had a friend there his age, who died in the same blast, but his right leg was largely untouched. Dr. Boutin grafted the dead boy’s leg onto the living boy’s body and it took, and grew with him.”

“Macabre,” Ocelot said, not unappreciatively.

“He’s good. He was doing the kind of cutting-edge work I doubt the UN would’ve let him do. He’s the man you want.” She couldn’t help adding, “You must have been there, at some point. I’m surprised you never met him.” And surprised he didn’t have every one of Big Boss’s former employees on file somewhere.

“I’ve met many people in my life,” Ocelot said. “Names can blur. But none of that...” He trailed off, staring at the file. “Unless they – of course. It must be.” He whirled around, his brown coat fanning behind him in a perfect flourish. “I will take your recommendation under advisement. You may return to your work.”

Naomi rolled her eyes. He liked that, didn’t he, granting his blessing for her to continue her own work, in her own lab, that he interrupted.

But, if it meant a potential contact with Dr. Boutin... well, she could live with it. This might have been a productive afternoon after all.

————

She got a brusque phone call a week later. “On further consideration, I’ve decided that the transplant will be performed by Dr. Boutin.”

“Come to that conclusion on your own, did you?” she said, grinning.

“Mm. Don’t push it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Naturally. Do you speak French?”

“Not well. A little bit. I speak Portuguese.”

“And is that French? Brush up on your French. We’ll both be needed in Lyon.”

“Oh, you’re going to hate this, aren’t you?” Naomi said. “You’re going to have to start pronouncing words right.”

Ocelot _hmph_ed. “We all must make our sacrifices for the greater good.”

————

“Inside,” Naomi said.

“Good,” Ocelot replied. The grouchiness in his voice sounded real; camping out on the hospital’s roof all day couldn’t have been fun or comfortable. “You’re heading to the entry point you’ve chosen?”

“The general area. It might take some time to find a room that’s properly secluded, or at least wait for the floor nurses to leave.”

“You don’t have to wait, you know.”

“I’m not going to kill anyone in a hospital, Ocelot. I’m in here to secure the entry point for you and the Gurlukovich team, and I’ll call you back when I do. Wait for my signal.” She steadied herself, took a breath. “I’m turning off my codec now.”

“What?” Ocelot said. “Why?”

He was suspicious, of course he was, she knew he’d be, but he’d be more suspicious if he tried to call her and she didn’t answer. “There are so many delicate and vital machines running in here. I’m not going to risk the unexpected radio waves from the codec ruining someone’s MRI. I’m a doctor. I won’t put patients’ well-being at risk just to leave you the option of rambling about Mother Russia in my ear.”

“I do not _ramble_,” Ocelot said, but the insult in his voice was entirely affected, and he even laughed at his own statement, a little.

That sounded enough like approval. Naomi turned her codec off.

And instead of heading to the agreed-upon entry point, she turned and headed towards the surgery unit’s private offices. She couldn’t turn back now. Couldn’t waste this chance.

She loitered down the hall from Boutin’s office, pretending to look intently at a bulletin board full of notices her eyes didn’t bother to register. And after twelve excruciatingly long minutes, he turned the corner, into view. 

Naomi recognized the man more from the photo in Ocelot’s file than from her own memory. A balding white man in a serious white coat, ambling down the hallway slowly enough to suggest that he probably didn’t have anywhere pressing to be. (Of course he didn’t. She’d ensured that.)

Seeing him was reassuring, in an odd way. Brought back childhood memories, of fear and bewilderment and pain and fierce wild pride and Frank by her side always and the kind of absolute certainty only the awe of Big Boss could bring and the fact that it was all long, long gone. The quick flash of certainty she felt when he began walking towards her was an unexpected gift. She needed this – for Frank, for the world, for herself. For justice, or failing that, at least revenge.

Ocelot’s weird games didn’t matter, really, and her own doubts and grievances couldn’t be allowed to matter either. What mattered was the fate of the world, and what she had to do to make sure she could deliver it.

Head high, shoulders back, black pumps clicking primly against the linoleum floors, Naomi walked down the hall towards him, sliding into the haughty, unimpeachable confidence of a doctor in a hospital. “Dr. Boutin! Oh, how wonderful to see you again!” she said, French words that she’d rehearsed until they sounded flawless. “Do you have a moment?”

He turned around, startled. “Oh! Miss...” He scanned her over, taking in her professional attire, her Croix-Rousse name badge. “Jaeger? I apologize, but have we been introduced? Are you new here?”

“Dr. Nina Jaeger, yes,” she said, shaking his hand. “And we have met.” She switched to Portuguese; the official language of Mozambique, the language they had spoken back then. Nothing like language to jog a memory. She felt more confident in Portuguese than French, anyway. “I met you when I was a young girl living in Mozambique.”

It took him a moment, but then he recoiled, as if being physically hit by the memory. “From the – Menina Jaeger? Is that you?”

It was a temporary name from a long time ago, a small child’s name, and it felt strange to be called that again. But the recognition was there. It worked. “Yes. I’m Dr. Nina Jaeger now.”

“Why, Menina, I haven’t seen you since – oh, since you were eight years old, surely.” He grasped her hand. “It is so good to know that you got out of that place. I – I was so worried!”

Liar. He certainly had not thought about her once since she disappeared from the compound, sent to America with her brother. If he’d said so, or said nothing, she wouldn’t have cared, but to _pretend_ that he’d cared was a bit insulting.

She forced herself to ignore it. She couldn’t seem off-putting in any way; she knew that well enough. Instead she fluttered her eyelashes, made herself fragile and scared and demure. “I’m glad,” she said, “because – I got involved in something big, bigger than I thought, and I’m frightened – they want you to do an experimental surgery that no one thinks is possible, they said they’d kill me if you didn’t –”

She was worried it would be a little _much_ but she had to get him fast, and Boutin’s eyes lit up like she knew they would. He wouldn’t be able to resist a challenge like this. And men like him loved to believe that they were heroes.

“Menina,” he said, clasping her hands, “of course. Anything for you. I have powerful friends, they can protect you. Just tell me what it is.” 

“Well,” she said, “I don’t have much time. But listen closely, and then go prep – if you do this right, if we play this right, I might be able to get you in on this too.”

————

The third floor held the rooms for surgery patients’ prep and recovery. Evening was falling – patients would be going to sleep soon, and nurses were making rounds to check and administer medications. Naomi breezed through the hall towards the private rooms, not turning her head, watching the floor nurses from the side of her vision, noting which rooms they entered and left. One of them glanced at her without curiosity; the others were too busy to bother.

She checked each unvisited room quickly, each time making sure no eyes were on her. The first empty private room she found, near a turn in the hallway, would provide the best cover she was going to get. Naomi slipped through the door and shut it silently behind her. The room wasn’t spacious, but the bed was against the opposite wall from a window large enough for a person to fit through. She pulled back the curtains, exposing the glass and letting the yellow lights from the city into the dark room. This would do.

Naomi finally switched on her codec again. “Ocelot. Do you read me?”

“About time,” Ocelot’s voice said in her ear. “I was concerned you had changed your mind about seeing this through.”

“Never,” Naomi said, doing her best to sound hurt over the subvocalization-only comm. “I’m putting in the effort to make sure this operation goes flawlessly.”

“Such dedication. Are you in position, then?”

“I am,” she said, abandoning the stupid back-and-forth. “Third floor, private room, empty, no security cameras, no alarms. I assume you can pinpoint my location by my nanomachines?”

“Yes. Located. Obstacles?”

“Clear entry, but make it quick and keep it quiet. The walls are thin and there are nurses in the hallway and adjacent rooms.”

“Please,” Ocelot said. “You sound as if you doubt me.”

“I just want to make sure this will remain a stealth operation. I would _hate_ to have all my preparations rendered pointless.”

“I have preparations of my own in place,” Ocelot said, and he sounded as if he was moving, his breathing picking up like he was starting to jog toward the position. “No need at all to worry.”

“No murders inside the hospital, Ocelot,” Naomi said sharply. “We agreed.”

“We did not agree. You stated, and I considered.”

“No murders inside the hospital, Ocelot. I’m still a doctor.”

“And I’m not. We’ll see.” It was nothing like a promise, but Naomi knew better than to expect one, so she just let out a long, frustrated sigh.

There was a distorted _whoosh_ in her ear, and a few moments later, attached to a harness and rappelling rope, Ocelot lowered into view outside the window. Naomi nodded to acknowledge him, he nodded to acknowledge her back, and then he kicked hard off the surface of the glass and arced out backward. It took Naomi a moment to process what he was doing, but after a second her eyes widened and she lunged out of the way as Ocelot slammed spurs-first into the window. He crashed through into the room, a shower of glass creating a halo of reflected golden glitter around him as he descended in from heaven.

Once the glass had stopped flying and no hospital staff had immediately burst in to see what the commotion was, Naomi straightened up again to face him. She brushed a nearly-invisible shard of glass off her hand; it left a thin scratch of blood across her knuckles. “So stealth is entirely off the table, is what you’re telling me.”

“Stealth is about more than just silence,” Ocelot said, unconcerned. Though almost fully covered in his long coat, he had scratches of blood on him, too; she wondered if he even felt them. “Stealth is about not getting caught. At least not right away.” He unhooked the rope, tossed the end back out the window, then reached across his body with his good hand and pulled a lumpy object from a pouch at his side. He dropped it to the floor with a substantial _thump_. When Naomi stepped closer to look, with the light from the streetlamps coming in with the wind through the broken window, it was a rock. Just a rock, the size of her two fists pressed together, with a sloppily-handwritten note scotch-taped to it reading “JE DÉTESTE LES PERSONNES MALADES”.

“We’re _all_ going to get caught,” Naomi said flatly.

“Us? Why would we?” Ocelot said, brushing glass dust off his clothes. “It is those rascally Lyonese teenagers with no respect for the sick that they need to be looking for. Distraction and redirection is an important tactic to have in one’s arsenal.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

With the coast established clear, two more men, each in turn, swung through the window after Ocelot. Gurlukovich mercenaries, one with an AKS assault rifle slung over his shoulder, the other with something bulkier and rather more frightening over his.

The yellow light in the dark room glinted off the glass case, but Naomi didn’t need to see what was inside. She’d seen the arm enough.

Ocelot was in place. Liquid’s arm was in place. Dr. Boutin was in place. The cards would fall where they would. The price of return was almost too high to contemplate. But not impossible. Still not impossible, if that was what she wanted. She had to believe that, if she believed anything, in order to say, “The operating room is down the stairs and to the left. Not far. Stealth is possible. Try to keep yourself under control.”

“I once had to fight to kidnap a man from a burning hospital,” Ocelot said. “This _is_ me under control.”

Surely not _all_ of Ocelot’s stories could be true, but she believed this one. “Follow me. Don’t shoot anybody unless you absolutely have to.”

“I never do,” Ocelot said with such solemnity that Naomi almost wanted to break character to snort.

She cracked the door open and peered into the hallway. The floor nurse was just disappearing into one of the rooms down the hall. It was now or never, and with Ocelot standing behind her, _never_ was receding as an option.

Naomi pushed the door open, tossed her head back, and headed towards the operating room. She didn’t look back. Wouldn’t have minded all that much if the soldiers behind her decided not to follow.

They did, of course.

They didn’t need her to lead them. Ocelot certainly had memorized the relevant parts of the map that the her nanomachines had constructed from her recon a week ago. They followed her anyway.

They didn’t have to shoot anyone, which was nice, and they only once had to quickly and awkwardly duck around a corner to avoid approaching footsteps. Both their secrecy and their pride were intact by the time Ocelot reluctantly jammed a sedative into the man behind the desk in front of the operating room while Naomi threw the door open and sailed in.

Dr. Boutin, trembling and nervous, washed-out in the harsh light and his sickly surgical scrubs, looked up sharply at her. “Menina! Thank goodness you are all right, I can protect you in here, now if you can just bring in the... patient...” He trailed off and his face turned nearly as green as his robe as the two mercenaries walked in and took up their positions on opposite sides of the door. They stood at attention, perfectly framing Ocelot as he sauntered in and swung the door shut behind him. As grand an entrance as he could make under the circumstances. The star of this show.

“You,” Dr. Boutin said weakly. “It’s you?”

“Dr. Mathy-yew Bootin,” Ocelot drawled. “An honor to meet you in person. I’ve read so much about you. So much that has been redacted.”

“Ocelot,” Dr. Boutin whimpered. “I... I was not informed of this development. Did the La-li-lu-le-lo approve this?”

“That is none of your concern at all,” Ocelot said. “You surely can’t expect the La-li-lu-le-lo to keep you informed of everything they decide.”

“I would have been informed about this,” Dr. Boutin said, now sounding less dazed and rather more afraid. “Something this secret, this strange. This must be for them. They would have told me.”

“Oh, I assure you, the La-li-lu-le-lo have ultimate faith in my, shall we say, ability to work under my own discretion,” Ocelot said, spinning a revolver around one finger, with an air of laziness that was a direct threat.

Boutin turned to Naomi, desperately. “You did not tell me the patient was going to be _him!_ You did not warn me that this came from within... were you trying to _test_ me?”

Ocelot stopped spinning. “Oh?” he said. “Were you trying to test him, Dr. Hunter?”

Naomi clenched her teeth but tried to keep her face even. _Damn it. Damn it, he was Big Boss’s doctor, he’s gotten away with secrets before, I really expected him to be smarter than this._ “I met him in the hall and told him to get ready for surgery,” Naomi said, as if it meant nothing at all to her. “No point in wasting time once you were inside.”

“No,” Ocelot said, slowly holstering his gun, not taking his eyes off her. “No point indeed.”

“I –” Boutin looked back and forth between Naomi and Ocelot, desperately. “I didn’t expect – I, ah, cannot do a transplant on my own, something that difficult and delicate requires a team –”

Naomi pressed her fingers behind her ear. “Surgery team,” she said, out loud. “Positions.”

Barely a moment later, the door swung open again, and four people flowed into the small room. “A registered nurse, an anaesthesiologist, a physician’s assistant, a plastic surgeon,” Ocelot said, shrugging off his coat onto a chair with indifference. “And Dr. Hunter herself, of course, for observation and guidance. The finest team you could ask for.”

Boutin scanned the staff, and Ocelot said, “Oh, you don’t know any of them. They won’t help you. They have prepared all the preliminaries, and have been paid _very_ well to help only on the surgery.” He sat on the operating table and began to unbutton his shirt. The mercenary with the rifle raised it pointedly; the mercenary with the arm opened up the preservation case. The arguing was barely even a formality. This was going to happen.

————

The operation took six hours. It may have taken shorter if Boutin’s hands weren’t shaking so much. Naomi offered no words of support; if he was nervous, anything she offered afterward would seem a godsend. But the way Ocelot glared at Boutin the whole way through the surgery, she wondered how the hell she had missed... whatever this was.

The surgery team left promptly once the transplant was finished. No need to give him a chance to talk to anyone.

“I’m going to tell the La-li-lu-le-lo about this,” Dr. Boutin said shakily as he paced the small room, observing Ocelot. “This cannot have been ordered. It’s – unauthorized, and dangerous! They will not like that you hid this from them. You’ve overstepped too far this time, Ocelot.”

Ocelot was moving his shoulder in sluggish circles, his new arm hanging limp and new fingers twitching. He gave a noncommittal _mm-hmm_ in answer.

Dr. Boutin drifted over to her. “Menina–” he whispered, trying to sound protective, paternal.

“Just Nina,” Naomi said tiredly. She was watching Ocelot too. He was starting to flex his fingers now, and it was unnerving just how quickly he was regaining fine motor control. Like the arm itself had been waiting for a new body, ready to spring to life again.

He ignored her. “– I am truly sorry, I did not take your plea as the warning it was, and alerted my powerful friends. I’m not surprised that you were scared; but I truly thought that you could offer me a position to protect you. But if Ocelot is involved –”

“Yes,” Ocelot drawled, “About this warning, and apparently, job offer, Dr. Hunter. You _have_ been busy.”

Naomi shot a glare at Boutin – how cocky was he going to get? He was ruining everything – and said to Ocelot, “Well, yes. You’ve shown well enough that you don’t understand just how much goes into a transplant surgery, so I figured I would save myself the time arguing with you and just set up the follow-up myself. Transplants are difficult business. You’ll need a long-term prescription for immunosuppressants to prevent your body from rejecting the arm, you’ll need close monitoring, and checkups, and physical therapy. It would be immensely helpful to have a doctor on staff – someone who isn’t me, to oversee your progress. It would be _most_ helpful to have a whole medical crew. And it would make sense for it to be the doctor who knows most about your surgery, and who’s in the loop already – no point spreading this around further than it has to go.”

They were well-thought out and rock-solid arguments. But under Ocelot’s appraising stare, they felt extraordinarily flimsy coming out of her mouth.

Ocelot nodded. “A medical crew,” he said. “That _would_ be useful to have. And, I assume, they would all report to you, and be loyal to you, wouldn’t they?” Naomi refused to look away, or look ashamed. “You’re moving faster than I expected. Are you planning to _betray_ me, Dr. Hunter?”

“Betray you?” Naomi walked towards him, as if she was pleading, putting herself between Ocelot and the chair with his coat and his revolvers. “Why? As long as you’re working toward the same goal I am, as long as the things you’re doing are moving us toward that goal, why would I betray you?”

He actually laughed at that; he heard the only-barely-veiled meaning in her words too well. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “But you tipped your hand too soon, Doctor, and I have far too much respect for you to allow you to amass that kind of leverage.”

She spread her hands innocently. “I wasn’t planning to move against you. I’m just trying to protect myself. You understand.”

“Oh, I do. We all need to take appropriate measures. You understand.”

He smiled at her, apparently satisfied; she smiled back, already trying to come up with a next step. They couldn’t both reach the end of this alive, but for as long as their friendly little cold war held, this could be a wonderfully productive partnership.

“You... you were working together, this whole time?” Dr. Boutin said, breaking the silence. “Menina, were you working with him? Was this all a trick? Who are you _working_ for, Ocelot?”

Ocelot turned his stare to Boutin. Naomi rolled her eyes. He really wasn’t too bright, to bring attention back to himself like that, was he.

“Who?” Ocelot said. “Why, poor disgraced President Sears, of course. Some of us still understand true loyalty. I am, as ever, his right-hand man.”

“Well,” Naomi had to add, “briefly, left-hand man.”

“I stand at _his_ right hand,” Ocelot said. “My own hands are irrelevant here.”

Dr. Boutin only said, “So you admit – you admit this is a betrayal, then.”

Ocelot straightened up slowly where he sat on the table, his back curving like a stretching cat. “As if _you_ were such a model of loyalty. Tell me, Boutin, just why did Big Boss’s first fortress fall? What did you offer to the La-li-lu-le-lo, for them to whisk you out of Mozambique and expunge all the records that you were ever there? They did a thorough job. You must have done something very valuable for them.”

Boutin looked stricken. “Ocelot, no –” And when it was clear that would get him nowhere now, “Menina, please – you were always such a good girl, you don’t want to do this, tell him something, tell him –”

“I told you,” Naomi said, picking up Ocelot’s revolvers off the chair. The Gurlukovich with the rifle tensed; she stared him down, then turned that look to Boutin. “It’s Dr. Nina Jaeger. And,” she added, drifting over to Ocelot and handing one of the revolvers to him, but never breaking eye contact with Boutin, “in any case, it’s Dr. Naomi _Hunter_ these days.”

“No,” Dr. Boutin said, faintly.

Naomi turned her head to look down at Ocelot, her hair cascading over her shoulder. “You were right. ‘No murders inside the hospital’ was a little bit too much to expect.”

Ocelot grinned, handling the gun with such delicacy it was like he’d never lost his own arm at all. “One murder inside the hospital, then?”

“I think that’ll do.”

Naomi cocked one gun. Ocelot spun the other around his fingers, testing out his new right hand, his gun hand. And then, arms outstretched and pointing together – and Naomi watching Ocelot out of the corner of her eye, and knowing full well he was doing the same to her, just to be sure – they fired.

**Author's Note:**

> I love... Misanthropy. I know "Ocelot was the one who broke Naomi out actually" was one of MGS4's many retcons but I actually love the idea of them being weird tense murder friends. A scientist and a supersoldier travelling the world, committing crimes, promoting the spread of Metal Gears, making everything worse, and trying to save the world.


End file.
